Conophytum bilobum gracistylumThere's a man who holds monthly WhatsApp sales and he offers conophytums from time to time. I was late for the sale and surprised to see that everyone was going made for the stapeliads on offer and not interested in Conos. I put in an offer and to my surprise, I got them all. Some of them are species that I already have but they are very saleable at shows and they sell for quite a lot more than I paid so who needs more justification than that?

Adromischus are an extremely variable genus found throughout the drier parts of Southern Africa and the hotter, sunnier and drier it is, the more they like it. They love my greenhouse and are happiest in the hottest, brightest part of it. Although they look like miniature trees, they don't do well as pot plants on a windowsill in a house so they are niche plants for succulent freaks and like lithops, you can never have just one...

The succulent society that I belong to always gets a stand at the yearly bonsai show and those of us that wish to sell plants can do so, in return for being there over the 3 days that the show runs and helping to promote the society. This is a good time to make space on the greenhouse shelves and start to move some of the seedlings that I have been growing for a few years now. I had a lot of smaller plants that I sold cheaply and by the end of the show I had made about 150HBD from my small corner of the stand so I was happy.

Although we think of deserts when we think of cacti, there are a group found mainly in tropical America that colonised the trees. Epiphytic is the name given to plants that live on trees and we usually think about orchids living in trees but looking at the flowers, these are clearly cacti family. You can grow them in cactus soil but they are happiest if you grow them in bark chips in hanging baskets. I don't have enough trees to do that so mine live on a shady windowsill outside. All of these cacti would die in my greenhouse.

Springtime is when the cacti bloom and here are some more Turbinicarpus flowers. The first is T. alonsoi and the second T. schmeidickianusSulcorebutia is still quite pale, it hasn't fully woken up but the first flower has popped open and there are more buds.

Wut, is she taking me somewhere again?!?Toffee is about 10 years old and was part of a group of 3 cats living rough on the mountain when I moved into my house. Unfortunately the other 2 died before they could be caught but Toffee was bolder and used to come into to my house to try and get food and I eventually caught him after 6 months. He's always had this habit of pulling his hair out with his teeth and we could never understand why. It's not a flea allergy and so it was thought to be behavioural but it got a lot worse recently. The darker hair in the picture is hair growing back after he pulled it all out. He was also licking his lower belly a lot, something he hadn't done before and acting aggressive towards his housemates.